teceem: So... very early 70s then? (you don't have to answer that ;-)
The reason why I was wondering about your age: when I was in/at college/university - studying something very computer-related - having your own (PC) was really not a necessity... Maybe a bit easier / more comfortable - but being able to use the ('public') PCs that were available to all students was more than enough to graduate.
In high school (age 11/12 to 17/18), "learning" about computers was like a novelty workshop in the last years. I remember that we had this word processing program - I think that it was just made for educational purposes - it was a far cry from WordPerfect, closer to Notepad/Wordpad now.
I never had parents like that; in many ways, they were always stuck in their golden 60s. I didn't feel it was needed - being a kid in the late 80s, early 90s - give me a random piece of software and I'd learn it inside out in a short amount of time. Though (advanced) programming was never really a big interest of mine.
:) I use to go with my parents and siblings to tech locals or what ppl call today maker caves or coding bootcamps. So the kids we met there were into tech in some fashion. Those were the kids I use to hang with and hit the arcade with as oppose to the kids at the school. Schools were behind the times til the debut of the classroom Macs with Oregon Trail and the like. By the time I was in HS we had computer classes in DOS/TRS-80s or you could take STENO, Metal Shop or Carpentry by your 11th grade.
I was a parent in my mid-teens it was the skills I learned as a kid with tech that made it easier for me to find work or hustle money together to raise my kids. As they got older it passed down as we would hit LUGs, Amateur computer shops, Radio Controlled clubs, FGC locals and the like. A lot of this stuff was and still is free so it helped to expose them early like my parents did inadvertently did by just being the curious nerds they are.
I do remember in HS a lot of recruiters for job placement and flyers left and right all over NYC looking for computer repairmen back when so few were in the know.
